Chapter 9 – Assassinating Lincoln and Facing Retaliation


The school was buzzing with adrenaline over the fact that our basketball team had done the impossible and actually made it to the regional finals. Ken seemed oblivious to this fact as we walked down the hall, not that it should have surprised me.

"Who's Lincoln?" he asked Vicki as she and another cheerleader strung a sign across the hall that read 'Assassinate Lincoln'.

I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, that's just how good his delivery was at times, but I could only hope that he was. Lincoln was one of our biggest rivals in just about everything. Basketball, baseball, softball... hell, even the mathlete teams shared a venomous competitive streak between them. Football, it seemed, was their Achilles' heel. Even with the horrid record the Norsemen held, we were always at least above the Lincoln Loggers. Before I could answer for my friend, the head cheerleader looked down in our direction and explained for me.

"Our rivals." Vicki wore a look that said he was the stupidest person she had dealt with all day. I knew that look well, as it was one she didn't even spare her boyfriends from. Well, at least she didn't with this former boyfriend.

I instantly (and desperately) began focusing my attention everywhere and anywhere except in her general direction when she took notice of Ken. Our last run-in was horrible enough, and I certainly wasn't looking for any sort of encore.

Suddenly the other cheerleader chimed in, 'We made regionals. Isn't that cool?', and saved me from any sort of uncomfortable interaction with Vicki. I looked at the girl for a moment, trying to recall her name. It was Stacey. Stacey Lockhart. I had felt bad for the girl ever since the end of summer when I had accidentally placed a target on her back. I had stopped by Vicki's house one Saturday afternoon to pick her up for a party we were going to, and a few other cheerleaders were still there, being scolded by my ex for one reason or another. Foolishly, I intervened when she began picking on Stacey for seemingly doing her routine perfectly. That was the first time I got one of those 'you're the stupidest person I've dealt with today' glares from the blonde cheerleader. I'll never forget Vicki scoffing and talking loud enough for all the other girls to hear, insinuating that Stacey's routine was sloppy and slow, and she wasn't going to allow the girl to embarrass her squad. I'll also never forget the look of pained disappointment that riddled Stacey's face at Vicki's words. The girl looked absolutely crushed. There were only two other times I had been to Vicki's place when Stacey was present, and both times Vicki had tormented the girl to the point of tears. The fact that they had made amends and were now working together shocked me a bit as it brought me back to the present.

Ken, still dumbfounded by exactly what was 'cool' and banner-worthy about being in regionals, asked, "In what?"

"Basketball." Vicki must have looked at him again and spotted me, otherwise I have no idea why she would say what she did next. "You know, our only good team with good players who don't quit for no reason."

It seemed that Vicki's words shook the cobwebs from Ken's memory. I could almost see the wheels turn in his head as he latched onto what he had found out a few months ago, quickly glancing at me with a shit-eating grin on his face.

"Well that's pretty harsh, right Donovan? I wonder who she could be talking about. Oh, wait..." His grin spread more and I wanted to smack the back of his head. "Didn't you two used to-"

"No, no!" I sternly reprimanded, covering his mouth with one hand and pushing him forward with the other. "We're done here. Move along."

As we made our way to where Daniel and Kim were, standing in front of a set of lockers, I heard Vicki start to scold Stacey a nanosecond later over jerking the paper banner too much. Vicki never was one to disappoint when it came to irrational snapping.

It had been about a month since I witnessed the fallout at the Kelly household and neither of us had spoken a word about it to anyone else in the group. I could only imagine that both Daniel and Lindsay had seen similar events during their trips to her house, but it was the kind of thing you really didn't want to recall. She had covered the bruise with makeup and, if I didn't know for a fact it was there, I never would have guessed anything was wrong. That concept was actually somewhat scary to me because it made me wonder just how many times she had done a cover-up job in the past and no one was the wiser.

"Did you guys hear about the basketball game?" Ken asked as we neared our friends. "Pretty exciting," he finished sarcastically, sounding as if the notion couldn't be more boring to him.

"I'm so sick of all this 'rah-rah' crap everywhere," Daniel groaned out with audible disgust. "These jocks think they're such badasses, walkin' around like they cured cancer."

I raised my eyebrows guardedly, holding up my hand ever so slightly. "Um, former jock, right here."

"They're just monkeys!"

It was glaringly apparent that Desario had issues with the athletically gifted as he proceeded to make mocking monkey-shriek sounds at a passing jock. Unsurprisingly, the kid paid my friend no attention and kept walking on by. That was how it was between jocks and freaks most of the time. We knew not to throw down during school hours, and if one side or the other really wanted a fight, it would take more than insulting the fact that a person was good at sports or liked to smoke weed to get fists flying.

"Still right here and now slightly offended," I continued, but it was apparent that Daniel was not listening to my banter. Ken gave me a reassuring pat on the back, as he was getting a chuckle out of it at least. Lindsay appeared and the conversation instantly switched to her and Nick. After requesting to speak with Kim privately (resulting in Ken being scolded for jokingly asking if Linds was pregnant), the three of us were left to our own devices... to naturally assume that she was, indeed, pregnant. The couple had progressively been getting heavier and heavier as their relationship continued, and last week Kim and Daniel were both sure they were going to have sex. Our speculation did not seem that far-fetched.


As it turned out, we were way off base. Nick and Lindsay weren't expecting... they were breaking up. It took Kim all of an hour to blab the news to Ken, Daniel and me. Secrets were not exactly a good thing to trust her with.

Sure, the news sucked, but everyone was making it out to be a super-big deal. They seemed like a good couple, if not awkward from time to time. If it wasn't Lindsay's growing pains that were quite apparently a result of her being in a real relationship for the first time that had us scratching our heads, it was Nick's complete and utterly overwhelming approach to relationships that made us grimace every time we saw him do something that was obviously smothering. Just like any other pair, there were things that worked about them, and things that simply didn't. Nick liked to get high a little too much (as in almost all the damn time), and that truly freaked Lindsay out. I don't know how many of the others in our group she confided that little tidbit in, but she sought me out specifically to ask me if it was "normal" to smoke as much as he did. Again, keeping secrets was not Kim Kelly's strong suit, and it seemed even Lindsay was not immune to the gossip when it spread after Homecoming.

"Nick... does not exactly take break-ups well," Daniel confided after school as we all clustered in front of some lockers the next day. "He kinda goes off the deep end."

My curiosity was truly piqued at the explanation and I asked, "Such as?"

He gave me a look of disapproval before answering. "Well, when Heidi Henderson dumped him he broke into her house and got into a fight with her dad. The cops got involved and everything."

"Okay, yeah, that's a little off the deep end. What the hell was he thinking?"

Daniel simply shrugged and shook his head before Ken cleared his throat awkwardly, signaling for all of us to shut up as Lindsay turned the corner. A group of excited kids ran by, screaming about how we would 'kill Lincoln' and that 'McKinley rules'. This, in turn, brought on more jovial jock bashing with Ken delivering a true zinger about wanting to attend the game because he heard we were going to lose, and he thought it was funny when jocks cried. I couldn't help but burst into laughter when he started imitating a baby and whining about how the other team cheated. The sad thing was that sometimes it actually felt like that in the locker room after a tough loss.

The conversation went right back to the doomed relationship when we spotted Nick nearing from down the hall. Daniel practically begged Lindsay not to go through with ending it, but she didn't seem too conflicted about what she wanted to do as she detached herself from the group and had Nick drive her home.

Honestly, I couldn't blame her. If she wasn't happy in the relationship, she owed it to herself to end it instead of dragging the thing out and potentially hating Nick in the long run as a result. Loverboy would be heartbroken, of that we were all sure, but I found it extremely odd that everyone seemed only concerned about how Nick would feel when it was over and not how trapped and rattled Lindsay seemed to be feeling in the relationship. It wasn't until it was revealed that she was looking to break up with him that I could see how wholly unprepared the brainiac was for a genuine relationship. They both had some maturing to do before they would be ready to be with anyone, and I didn't know if either knew it.


Less than an hour later and Ken, Daniel, Kim and I were still hanging out around the school. If there was a class in loitering, we would all certainly be getting an A+. Ken had just let one rip and, in an effort to clear our minds of the stench, we all started talking about scents we liked instead of what was currently in the air.

"I really like the smell of coconut," Kim admitted with a hint of a smile. "It's calming, y'know?"

Something coconutty for her birthday and some anti-gas stuff for Ken's. Check, I thought to myself before contributing. "I like the smell of rain. You can pick up on it before it even starts and it's just so, I dunno, refreshing and pleasant."

"Anything is pleasant in comparison to that," Kim smirked, looking to Ken momentarily.

Daniel began adjusting his beanie and fawned, "Man, I love the smell of gasoline." He gave the air a good sniff for emphasis.

Kim politely informed him that those kinds of fumes result in brain damage and I gazed on as a very nice red convertible slowed to a stop in front of us. My eyes began examining the fine piece of machinery ahead.

Oh, man, that's, uh... it's a... oh come on, Donovan! Think!

The driver asked something but I was still trying to remember what kind of car he was driving and didn't listen. Kim replied and then, finally...

A '68 Pontiac LeMans!

"Norsemen suck!" the driver yelled and all four occupants began pelting us with water balloons before driving away as we all clumsily gave chase on foot. Needless to say, we didn't make it more than a few feet before we gave up as the car sped off into the distance. Daniel threw his nearly-empty cup of Faygo at the assailants, but even that was a horribly wasted effort.

"Man! I'm soaked!" Kim yelled, throwing her arms down as beads of water flew everywhere from her flippant efforts. "Will you do something Daniel!?"

Daniel, water dripping from his face, looked nothing less than pissed. The quiet kind of pissed that I rarely witnessed. "What do you want me to do?" he almost hissed in a low, agitated tone. "Blow on you?"

"Fuckin' Loggers," I sighed, looking at the wet spot on my crotch. A balloon hit my belt and exploded, but the resulting wet patch made it look like I had simply wet myself.

"Those assholes are from Lincoln?" Kim turned around and asked me.

I simply nodded in return, recognizing one of the passengers as a Logger opponent from the football field., and tried to dry off as best I could without looking like I was playing with myself.

Ken, being ever on point that day, soberly stated, "That bettera been water. That's all I'm sayin'."

"Come on, let's see if we can get'em," Daniel commanded, ignoring Ken's comment.

We all got into his Trans Am but were soon disappointed to find that the engine was sputtering instead of starting when he turned the key. It took almost ten minutes before the engine (weakly) came to life and by that point we all knew that any hope of finding the Lincolnites was long gone.

What a fantastic way to end a Friday.


The embarrassing finish to the day before was proof enough to Daniel that his car needed some more work done on it. That was how Daniel, Kim, Ken and I ended up hanging out in front of Aldo's Auto Salvage and Tow (nobody ever called him Aldo anymore, though, just Al), changing out the spark plugs and checking out the general well-being of all things under the hood. Somewhere along the way, conversation drifted to the status of Nick and Lindsay and just how we all viewed relationships.

"The dumbest thing you can do- let a girl know how much that you like her. Then they just run," Daniel stated.

Kim scrunched up her face for a moment and then looked at her boyfriend with a smirk before teasing him with a question. "Oh, is that why you're such a bastard to me?"

"Yeah, well..." He looked up at her, wearing a smirk of his own. "You're still here, aren't ya?"

I watched the two banter back and forth in a truly affectionate way, each know exactly how the other would react. It was nice to see them act that way towards one another with an audience instead of doing things that seemed to simply beg for attention. Like, when they would make loud, over-exaggerated smacking and moaning sounds when they made out or, on a very rare occasion, they would pick at one another until one of us intervened. The latter was far more uncommon for the duo because, more often than not, one of them would go too far and the on-off couple would be off... again.

I had to admit that Daniel did have a point; a little bit of mystery was always welcome (so long as you weren't hiding something truly horrendous). On the other hand though, I was of the opinion that wearing your heart on your sleeve from time to time was just as welcome (and perhaps essential) in many relationships. Before I could vocalize any of that though, I saw it out of the corner of my eye- the LeMans that had blitzed us the other day. I gently tapped Kim's arm and pointed in its direction.

She spotted the car and almost burst into a frenzy. "Oh man, there's that car! Those jocks from Lincoln that nailed us, that's them!"

We all jumped into the car and Daniel sped off after them.

It didn't take more than a few minutes to make it to their destination, a house in one of the nicer parts of town. When the coast was clear we pulled ahead of the parked car and all got out, Kim had a can of spray paint in hand. She held the Aerosol canister out to Daniel, telling him to tag the car, and the two briefly bickered back and forth about why it was on him. Reluctantly, he took the bottle and began spraying the side of the '68. It honestly hurt to see something so nice being trashed, but they did deserve it. What hurt more was Daniel's spelling of 'you suck' that had been shortened and butchered to 'u-suk'.

Just as he finished, the blond-haired driver came out from his driveway. "What are you doing?"

Daniel began to step back. "Um..."

"We're giving your car a new paint job!" Kim's voice boomed as she defiantly made her way towards the Lincolnite. "What are you gonna do about it, huh?"

Damnit, Kim! We already tagged his car! Are we supposed to smash his face in, too?

"What the hell?" the kid asked rhetorically, looking truly shocked that we had sought revenge against him.

"That's what you get, water-balloon boy!" Daniel finally jumped in, sounding more assured than he was a moment beforehand.

"Yeah, man. Thanks a lot," Ken added.

Well, at least it's just him... I concluded in my mind, unable to stop myself from joining in on the taunting.

"You're lucky we didn't do... worse..." I trailed off as four more of his friends came into sight. I quickly reasoned that this was no longer a good situation to be in and our act of retaliation may have just turned around to bite us in the ass.

"Yeah, something- uh, something tells me it's time to go," Ken remarked as we all started backing up again. All of us, that was, except for Kim. She stood her ground.

"These losers are from McKinley," the blond boy remarked with disgust as his four companions joined behind him. "Look what that bitch just did to my car!" He raised his hands in exasperation and neared his tagged vehicle, making two mistakes in the span of a second.

There are certain things you don't ever call Kim, and one of them is 'bitch'. The other thing you shouldn't do to the feisty blonde when she is in a mood (which she clearly was by that point) is get in her personal space when acting confrontational... which he did as soon as he checked out his car. In a rage, Kim pushed the blond boy hard, yelling, 'You're the bitch, man!' before she came to her senses and backed up towards us.

"Come on, Daniel, kick his ass," she demanded of her boyfriend, as if the request was just that easy.

The gang started descending upon us and I protectively stepped in front of Kim as the ringleader mocked her words, 'Kick my ass?'

I was nervous, but it was too late to back out now. I was bigger than any of them, save for the stocky motherfucker wearing the hat, but a five on four fight was still an underdog match that was not in our favor.

I heard Daniel whimper out 'Tell my mother I love her,' before I shot forward and pushed the instigator into his friends. Two of them caught him and the other two rushed towards us. I traded blows with one of them, the second swing landed on my shoulder instead of my face and I violently thrust my knee into his gut and pushed him to the ground. I was about to barrage him with rights and lefts when the blond guy tried to tackle me.

It literally made me laugh, which probably made me look crazy, but out of all the current chaos (with fights taking place all around me), the smallest guy trying to take on the biggest was hysterical to me. In what was undoubtedly a rip-off of some wrestling move, I wrapped my arms around him and just hurled the little twerp into his own car. He bounced off the metal, adding a nice-sized dent to his new paint job, and crumbled to the asphalt.

I turned around to see how the others were fairing and someone grabbed my arms and twisted them behind my back before whirling me back around. The little leader was back in my sights, looking a little worse for wear, but smirking as he started to throw his fist into my face repeatedly. After a couple of hits, he moved on to my ribs. By that point my mouth was bleeding; I could feel it ooze down my chin with each hit that landed on my flank, and it felt like my side was about to cave-in.

Every time my brain yelled at me raise my legs up and plant the soles of my feet in his chest, his hit would send a jolt of pain through my midsection and make me gasp for air, ruining any thought of capsizing my unfortunate situation.

The force holding my arms back loosened and suddenly disappeared altogether as I heard a whimper of pain behind me. The blond guy threw another punch my way but I deflected it and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt with both hands, pulling him in hard and thrusting my head towards his. I had seen guys do it all the time in movies and TV shows and it always looked cool. Holy shit was it not cool, though. The 'thunk' sound that was created as soon as our heads made contact was gut-wrenchingly painful to hear. As soon as it happened I let him go and stumbled backwards, feeling like I had just cracked my skull open. The pain was instant and immense. The scenes where the guy who head-butts the other one and plays it off like he didn't feel a thing were complete and utter bullshit! That really hurt!

Upon putting my hand to my forehead I could already feel the tell-tale signs of an oncoming goose egg. On the other hand, the tough guy was sprawled out on his back in the road, knocked out. It worked alright, it just wasn't worth it. I turned around and saw the guy who was holding my arms back, the stocky motherfucker, was now cradling his crotch and I could only assume one of my friends delivered a blow right between his legs. I laid a hard right cross into his jaw and knocked him out for good measure, too.

Daniel and Ken were pummeling the hell out of another one and Kim was furiously kicking at the fourth as he tried to shield his body from the blows. The fifth punk was halfway down the street, hightailing it as fast as he could.

"Come on, come on, let's go," I said, tugging on Kim's ripped shirt and staggering towards the Trans Am. In addition to the painful headache, I began to feel dizzy and sick well. "Guys, come on. They're done," I mumbled and reached for the Tans Am door handle. We needed to get the hell out of there, post-haste.


"UUUUCCCCKK!" I yelled, fairly certain I had somehow skipped the 'F' at the beginning of my cry. Something hard, wet and cold had thumped against the sore spot on my forehead and it sent a shock-wave of pain through my body.

Was I asleep? When did that happen?

"Oh shit, I'm sorry," Kim blurted out and once again placed the object on my bump, though much gentler this time.

I glanced around and caught Daniel's eyes flicker back and forth in the rear-view mirror as we raced down the road. "What the hell are ya doin' back there, Blondie?" he asked, sounding somewhat irritated. "You're spose'ta be holding the ice pack, not hittin' him with it."

I could see that he had a vertical gash next to his eye and a smaller horizontal one right above his nose.

"Well, if you'd stop driving like a maniac maybe I wouldn't have bumped him with it!" Kim snapped back at him. Both her top and bottom lips were split in the same area.

"What happened to you?" I asked hoarsely. Along with my head, my mouth was throbbing with pain and it kind of felt like it was stuffed with gauze.

"Same thing that happened to all of us," Ken replied, turning to face us from the passenger seat. His red badge of courage came in the form of a bloody nose. "We kinda got our asses kicked until Kim scratched one guy's face and kicked that big guy in the balls from behind. Then you got free and started smashing heads... and faces. I swear, man, I was waiting for you to turn green and Lou Ferrigno-ish." Ken began to laugh and I simply tried to smile, but ended up just grimacing in pain instead. "And you should've seen the look on the guy's face at the gas station when we asked for a few bags and filled them with ice from the fountain machine. He kept asking if we needed an ambulance."

Our antics knew no bounds.

"Daniel, slow down." Kim's voice came out deliberate and stern.

"We're not gonna make the start of the game if we don't hurry. We're gonna crush 'em. We're gonna crush 'em on the court as bad as we did on the street and I wanna be there to see it."

"No," she shook her head, "we need to drop him off at home first. It's on the way and it'll only take a minute to just stop and let us out."

"Us? You're not comin' to the game?" Daniel turned in his seat to look back at his girlfriend, swerving the car a little to the right in the process.

"Look at him!" Kim exclaimed, and I could swear I felt compassion in her tone. "He'd be in better shape if he fell off a cliff and hit every rock on the way down. Someone needs to explain what happened to his parents."

He simply turned back around and flopped in his seat, rubbing at his forehead with his free hand. Daniel seemed seriously irked, but I knew how he felt. I had been there, in the zone so deep that you don't want to do anything else but what you're focused on and any little distraction was unbearable.

I was so exhausted I kept going in and out, even though I tried actively to fight it when I was awake, and I knew that that wasn't a good sign. If I had a concussion then sleeping was the very last thing I should've been doing and I was playing with the fact that I could have easily slipped into a coma if worse came to worse. Daniel dropped us off and asked if we needed them to stick around, but Kim waved him off. I was hunched forward and dragging my feet as Kim lifted my arm around her neck and bore the burden of most of my weight.

"I swear to god, Donovan," she grunted as we made it up the walkway to the front door, "if you fall on me I'm gonna kill you."

I grinned and laughed, not being able to help myself.

"You're such a goof," Kim commented lightheartedly while shaking her head. A moment later she was laughing right alongside me.

My dad was away in Detroit on a career fair, which wasn't exactly unusual since he had to go to such events quite a bit with the job title he held, but my mother nearly fainted when we walked through the door with the injuries we had. She immediately rushed us to the family car (a cream-colored 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 that I absolutely hated) and drove to the hospital. Kim refused to be seen, but I didn't really have a choice. My visit lasted for just over two hours, and with the help of some x-rays and various stints of poking and prodding, my attending doctor delivered some good news and some bad news. While he concluded that I didn't have a concussion (my waning lethargy helped to rule hat out, as well as the concern of any other traumatic brain injury), any broken ribs or a cracked skull, my sides were heavily bruised and the inside of my left cheek had a deep gash from the face pummeling I received. It required stitches and the doc 'heavily recommended' that I go to my dentist ASAP just to be on the safe side. While the doctor was very pleased that I was becoming more and more awake and aware, he was concerned about the substantial increase in pain I was reporting to him. It felt like my head was going to explode with every beat of my heart at the height of the pain, and taking in sharp breaths didn't help matters much either with the shape my ribs were in. He wrote a prescription for pain relief and gave me a small shot of morphine in my IV before discharging me from the hospital. After about twenty minutes, before we even left the building, I was feeling much better... and extremely loopy. Almost everything was consumed in a blackout after the pain subsided.